"Superficiality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... notable instance of Roman superficiality, incuriousness and ignorance. Every old Egyptian city had its idols (images of metal, stone or wood), in which the Deity became incarnate as in the Catholic host; besides its own symbolic animal used as a Kiblah or prayer-direction (Jerusalem or Meccah), the visible means ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... written many kinds of stories about the West Coast, reaching almost to greatness in her "Grania" (1892). In the short story, Miss Jane Barlow, accused of superficiality by many Irish critics and as eagerly declared to get the very quality of Connemara peasant life by others, has sure power and a charm all her own. No one who reads "Irish Idylls" (1892) will stop at that collection. Mr. Seumas MacManus is as truly a shanachie as the old story-tellers that yet ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... Christopher's expedients for hiding the meditations of his heart from Elisabeth's curious eyes was the discussion with her of what people call "general subjects"; and this tried her temper to the utmost. She regarded it as a sign of superficiality to talk of superficial things; and she hardly ever went in to dinner with a man without arriving at the discussion of abstract love and the second entree simultaneously. It had never yet dawned upon her that as a rule it is because one has not experienced a feeling that one is able ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... Thus the frailty and superficiality of our own judgments cannot brook contradiction. We abhor another man's doubt when we cannot tell him why we ourselves believe. Our ideal of other men tends therefore to include the agreement of their judgments with our own; and although we might acknowledge the fatuity of this demand ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... conversations with the intelligent farmers of New England, whom he had especially studied, to show that their political education was such as to endanger the best interests of the community from its extreme superficiality; I, with an unfaltering faith in the processes of universal suffrage, disputed his conclusions, so hotly in fact that we quarreled and he took one side of the quarter-deck for his promenades and I the other. But the conditions of sea life, with a companionship limited to two persons, are such ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... people were better then than they were elsewhere. I took great interest in studying the life of our people there closely at that time. I found that while among them there was a large element of substantial, worthy citizens, there was also a superficiality about the life of a large class that greatly alarmed me. I saw young coloured men who were not earning more than four dollars a week spend two dollars or more for a buggy on Sunday to ride up and down Pennsylvania Avenue in, in order that they might try to ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... I answered him. In spite of the superficiality of his own arguments, which I was not learned enough to detect, I was ingloriously routed. Darwin had kicked over the bucket, and that was all there was to it.... After we had left the club both Conybear and Laurens admitted they were somewhat disturbed, declaring ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... accomplishment, his copious facility, his immense variety, the beauty of his draughtsmanship, and the felicity of his decorative design. But all this self-conscious skill, this ingenious affectation, this ostentatious muscularity, this immense superficiality—I feel always now a spiritual vacuity behind it which leaves me cold and critical. Every famous achievement of Raphael's, when I come upon it for the first time, repels me with a fresh shock of disillusionment. I am unpleasantly ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... silent a little. "The exhibition you're making," she seriously sighed at last, "of your inconstancy and superficiality! All the relics of you that I've treasured and that I supposed at the ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... purely philosophical and literary periodical, made its appearance in Milan, being founded by Count Pietro Verri (1728-97). Its chief editor was Cesare Beccaria. Its object was to counteract the influence and superficiality of the Arcadians. It acquired its title from the fact that Count Verri and his friends were wont to meet at a coffee house in Milan kept by a Greek named Demetrio. It lived ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... The book was not an historical romance, and the manners, sentiments, language, all were modern. Walpole knew little about the Middle Ages and was not in touch with their spirit. At bottom he was a trifler, a fribble; and his incurable superficiality, dilettantism, and want of seriousness, made all his real cleverness of no avail when applied to such a subject as ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... essence, always the same absence of moral personality, the same obtuseness of conscience, which has never recognized sin present in the will, which places evil outside of man, moralizes from outside, and transforms to its own liking the whole lesson of history! What is at fault is the philosophic superficiality of France, which she owes to her fatal notion of religion, itself due to a life fashioned by Catholicism and by ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... them. Guided by a sympathetic intelligence, adopting, not symbols, but ideas, he has, by force of penetration and comprehension, extracted the essence of each doctrine in turn. His changes therefore indicate, not superficiality, but depth. He is no more chargeable with volatility than society itself. Like it he is a seeker, listening to every proposition, accepting what is vital, rejecting what is merely formal. There ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... already, though not so resolutely as now, tried to bring her to consider their position, and every time he had been confronted by the same superficiality and triviality with which she met his appeal now. It was as though there were something in this which she could not or would not face, as though directly she began to speak of this, she, the real Anna, retreated somehow into herself, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... MEDIA TERRAE. Then, they, that part from those parts of the west for to go toward Jerusalem, as many journeys as they go upward for to go thither, in as many journeys may they go from Jerusalem unto other confines of the superficiality of the earth beyond. And when men go beyond those journeys toward Ind and to the foreign isles, all is environing the roundness of the earth and of the sea under our countries on ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... Quai d'Orsay Desprey, Monseigneur, created a Cardinal Desprey, M. a plenipotentiary of France at Berlin Congress quoted on treatment of ambassadors in Russia named ambassador to Rome Diplomatists antagonistic attitude of, toward the Republic anomalous and mistaken behaviour of superficiality of majority of Dufaure, M. appointed President du Conseil now cabinet formed ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... law of precedent, the mild gambols, the naive superficiality, the child-like irresponsibility for thinking, which were the characteristics of the first European novels, have generally distinguished the unnumbered and unclassified broods of them which have abounded ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... other men. He thought beyond immediate practical problems, devoting himself to a profounder reflection, that could not but induce in him a sense of superior intellectual worth. The familiar was not binding upon him, for his thought was emancipated from routine and superficiality. Furthermore his intellectual courage and resolution did not permit him to indulge in triviality, doubt, or paradox. He sought his own with a faith that could not be denied. Even Heraclitus the Dark, who was also called "the Weeping Philosopher," ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... some. The fifteen hundred dollars—a veritable godsend—which I receive annually under the will of my aunt, will keep the wolf at a respectful distance and enable me to play the investigator to my heart's content. I'm determined to be thorough, George. There is no excuse for superficiality in science. But in the end I intend to find out something new. See if I ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... fierce struggle in the forecastle, at the superficiality of his hurts, and I pride myself that I dressed them dexterously. With the exception of several bad wounds, the rest were merely severe bruises and lacerations. The blow which he had received before going overboard had laid his scalp open several inches. This, under ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... everybody to attain towards supreme excellence, if possible, in some one pursuit. On the other hand, he should gather knowledge, more or less, in every field, so as to avoid narrowness of view and poverty of idea. Versatility does not necessarily mean superficiality; we may know much of many things, and more of one thing. A man who is only a botanist, shuts himself out from all the truest and deepest pleasures of knowledge. It may be very clever for a violinist to play on a single string; but he must play ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... into her life had changed all that. In a moment of high and sensitive excitement he had dawned upon her vision as a novel type of manhood, and one representing all that was desirable. In vain she knew the superficiality of this judgment. In vain she reasoned her ignorance of him and his character. He had captivated her imagination, and this was the reason that Edna Derwent, as soon as she mentioned him, loomed to Sylvia's stirred thought ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... better,—in fact, whom nothing, as we can see, makes better. Everything glides easily off from them. Now, it is a noble thing to see a man rise above misfortune,—a moral Prometheus, submissive to the actual will of God, but defying fate. But there are men whose very elasticity indicates the superficiality of their nature. For it is good sometimes to be sad,—good to have depth of being sufficient for misfortune to sink into, and, accomplish its proper work. But the man who rightly receives the lesson of disappointment, ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... general information on a particular subject, may be a less successful experiment. Who undertakes extensive research except for an especial purpose? Who can so far confide in his memory as to append his name to a list of authorities without seeming to prove his own superficiality? I throw out these ideas for consideration, just as they arise; but neither wish to repress the curiosity of querists, nor to prescribe bounds to the communicative ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various
... pinch for his conscience after a few weeks had passed was simply an acute mistrust of the superficiality of performance into which the desire to justify himself might hurry him. That desire was passionate as regards Julia Dallow; it was ardent also as regards his mother; and, to make it absolutely uncomfortable, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... She was an excellent dancer, but although she was physically too young and healthy not to find a certain enjoyment in the sheer delight of rhythmic motion, she was conscious as the evening progressed of a certain quality of superficiality in the pleasure she experienced. There was a sameness about it all that palled. What was there in it, after all? One of your partners knew a priceless new glide or shuffle which he forthwith imparted to you, or else you initiated him into some step hitherto unfamiliar to him, and after that ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... Optimistic Period of our literature in which Mr. Brumley had begun his career. With every justification in the world Mr. Brumley had set out to be an optimist, even in the Granta his work had been distinguished by its gay yet steadfast superficiality, and his early success, his rapid popularity, had done much to turn this early disposition into a professional attitude. He had determined that for all his life he would write for comfortable untroubled ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... philosophy. All these were so full at once of the profound seriousness of youth, and of the bubbling wine of its high spirits, as to recall another thing Gilbert said: that Dickens was "accused of superficiality by those who cannot grasp that there is foam upon deep seas." That was the matter in dispute about himself, and very furiously disputed it was during these years. Was G.K. serious or merely posing, was he a great man or a mountebank, was he ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... to assume, so too his lack of repose and inward stability constantly contradicted it. He seemed merely to have borrowed the old gentleman's diplomatic manner of speaking in order to show his own superficiality and emptiness. Then at times he would suddenly lapse from the stiff demeanor of the wearer of the blue coat into his own patronizing joviality and onto a plane where joking rubs out with dirty fingers the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... is marvelous to note how happily Mr. Higginson, in securing an amazing compactness by his condensation, has avoided alike superficiality and dullness."—Boston Transcript. ...
— Bridge Disasters in America - The Cause and the Remedy • George L. Vose
... single treatment for all cases. In each subject there must be many kinds of treatment for the different cases in order to secure the largest growth of the individuals included. This does not in any sense necessitate the displacement of thoroughness by superficiality or trifling, but on the contrary greater thoroughness may be expected to result, as helpful adaptations of method and of matter give a meaningful and purposeful motive for that earnest application which ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien
... Miss Lavish, who had several times tried to interrupt his mordant wit. "The narrowness and superficiality of the Anglo-Saxon tourist is nothing less than ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... language of the natives. To this he ascribed most of his success as a missionary and explorer, for Livingstone's way was ever the gentle method of those who comprehend—not the harsh cruelty of those who feel superior to the ones among whom they work. In a day whose superficiality is only equalled by the ease with which we gloze over the faults of the unprepared, this bit of information of Livingstone's preparation comes like a refreshing reminder that true worth is always ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... great man of the night, who was to answer everybody on both sides. Ah! that harsh voice, that arrogant style, that saucy superficiality which decided on everything, that insolent ignorance that contradicted everybody; it was impossible to mistake them! And Coningsby had the pleasure of seeing reproduced before him the guardian of his youth and the patron of the mimic, the Right ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... I frequently repeat myself, it is done not unintentionally, but deliberately, because of the difficulty of the subject, as well as of the superficiality and negligence of so many singers who, after once hastily glancing through such a treatise,—if they consider it worth their while at all to inform themselves on the subject,—think they have done enough ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... to approach such a task: The first is to take the book as a whole and write a review of it, which is a method liable to a superficiality; the second is to take such a work chapter by chapter, and to piece the various criticisms into an ordered whole. This I have attempted to do. I make no attempt to criticize the method of Chesterton's approach to Browning, or his combination of the effect of his life on his ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... because most original. In 1769 she began to publish a newspaper called "All Sorts of Things" (or "Varieties"), to which she personally contributed satirical articles attacking abuses—chiefly the lack of culture, and superficiality of education. It was extremely popular with the public, and imitators started up, which the Empress eventually suppressed, because of their virulent attacks on her own journal. She ceased journalistic work in 1774, and ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... I took the cake for superficiality, and I guess he was right," replied the Idiot, with a smile ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... fresh system, and the task of poetically unfolding this mechanical view of the world was of such a nature that never probably did poet expend life and art on a more ungrateful theme. The philosophic reader censures in the Lucretian didactic poem the omission of the finer points of the system, the superficiality especially with which controversies are presented, the defective division, the frequent repetitions, with quite as good reason as the poetical reader frets at the mathematics put into rhythm which makes a great part of the poem absolutely unreadable. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... and his contemporaries knew well what they were condemning when they wrote against the State interference in trade and the trade monopolies of State creation. Unhappily, their followers, with their hopeless superficiality, flung medieval guilds and State interference into the same sack, making no distinction between a Versailles edict and a guild ordinance. It hardly need be said that the economists who have seriously studied the subject, like Schonberg (the editor of the well-known ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... a home for the father who now—in the light of her secret knowledge—she comprehended for the first time. All her life she had wondered about him. Wondered why she and Brace had not loved and honoured him as they had their mother. His weakness, his superficiality, had been dominated by the wife who, having accepted her lot, carried her ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... never gave up his study of it. He was not satisfied, and no true missionary ever will be satisfied with such a smattering of knowledge as may enable him to proclaim a few Christian doctrines. Such superficiality was not his aim or end. And when he first acquired Chinese, it was more difficult to do so. There were no aids in the way of ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... virtually amount to each individual parishioner being enabled, without appreciable cost, to possess books on a far larger scale than if he had a collection actually his own. The unfavourable operation of this state of affairs is twofold: it injures the literary market, and it promotes superficiality of study in the case of books which should be owned, not borrowed, to be thoroughly ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... specialists however. Their danger is superficiality through trying to do too many things. How can we be broad without being superficial? I have elsewhere said that I believe the school education should include the rudiments of many branches, and that these rudiments should be so thoroughly mastered that the girl should be able to go on with ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... superficiality which makes the place of the music in the history of Russian art so ambiguous. Intentionally, and to a certain extent, Rimsky's work is autochthonous. He was one of those composers who, in the middle of the last century, felt descend upon them the need of speaking ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... world of Europe, and till last century the Italian poets were more widely known and studied than those of any other nation. The baptismal name of the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci was given, on account of his book of travels, to a new quarter of the globe, and if Paolo Giovio, with all his superficiality and graceful caprice, promised himself immortality, his expectation has not ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... daily literature of Canadians—indeed the chief literary aliment of large numbers—is the newspaper press, which illustrates necessarily the haste, pressure and superficiality of writings of that ephemeral class. Canadian journals, however, have not yet descended to the degraded sensationalism of New York papers, too many of which circulate in Canada to the public detriment. On the whole, the tone of the most ably conducted ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... allowed him.[969] The military operations of the war at this stage become almost wholly subordinate to political considerations. Senate and consuls were being swept off their feet and forced into a disastrous celerity or superficiality of action by the growing tide of indignation which animated commons and capitalists alike; and the feeling that something decisive must be accomplished for the satisfaction of public opinion, was supplemented ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... indicating, however, more of the skill of the journalist than of the great author. He has not left a single line which embodies a great thought. He was a man of supernatural brilliancy rather than of great genius. Had his work been less witty and bright, he would be charged with superficiality; that which saves him from the accusation is the marvellous display of mental acuteness and a perfect mastery of the French language. The thought in his productions is as ephemeral as that in a morning ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... of the freedom of the press as freedom to say and write what one pleases, is parallel to the one of freedom in general, viz., as freedom to do what one pleases. Such views belong to the uneducated crudity and superficiality of naive thinking. The press, with its infinite variety of content and expression, represents what is most transient, particular, and accidental in human opinion. Beyond the direct incitation to theft, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... appear from such a psychological standpoint. The first chapters of this volume may appear like a long, tiresome way around before we come to our goal, the study of the psychotherapeutic agencies. And yet it is the only possible way to overcome the superficiality with which the discussion is too often carried on; we must understand exactly how the psychological analysis and explanation of the scientist differ from the popular point of view. After studying in this spirit the foundation of psychotherapy, we shall carefully examine the practical work, its methods ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... the subject easily, and began to talk of some trivial matter. From one question to another he passed, with that air of superficiality which northern men can never hope to understand, and here and there he touched upon those grave events which wise men foresaw at ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... adventurous and expensive wars. Yet his noble patriotism, frank heroism, brilliant genius, and great generosity compelled the love of his countrymen. In this mixture of patriotism and universal cosmopolitanism, true genius and superficiality, earnestness and recklessness in the character of Gustavus III, the Swedes recognized peculiarities of their own national temperament, for which they love him dearly, and Tegner has voiced this love in a few lines ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... restaurants, and while we confess to having some excellent dishes served us in Chinatown, our preference lies in other paths of endeavor. We suppose it is all in the point of view, and our point of view is that there is nothing except superficiality in the ordinary Chinese restaurants frequented by Americans, and those not so frequented are impossible because of the average Chinaman's disregard for dirt and the usual niceties ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... from their perpendicular path, and, sticking together after their collision, have given rise to the world. Not much better than these vague puerilities are his notions about the size of the sun, the nature of eclipses, and other astronomical phenomena; but he justifies his contradictions and superficiality by asserting that it is altogether useless for a man to know such things, and that the sage ought to give himself no trouble about them. As to the soul, he says that it must be of a material or corporeal nature, for ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... independent in action who has been earnest and thorough in preparation and self-culture. "Not for school, but for life, we learn"; and our habits—of promptness, earnestness, and thoroughness, or of tardiness, fickleness, and superficiality—are the things acquired ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... boating on the muddy Iscam, noisy wines, and interminable whist parties. Moreover, he had made far less sensation at Camford than he had expected. Somehow or other he had a dim consciousness that men saw through him; that his cleverness did not conceal his superficiality, nor his easy manners blind men's eyes to his ungenerous and selfish heart. Even his late phase of popular scepticism was less successful at Camford than it would have been at places of less steady diligence and less sound acquirements. In fact, Bruce ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar |
